


The Clemency of Chance

by Miss M (missm)



Series: The Road from Faverolles [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missm/pseuds/Miss%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a summer morning in 1832, Jeanne Valjean meets a stranger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Clemency of Chance

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a sequel of sorts to ["The Plight of Mother Jeanne"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/758790) and ["The Road from Faverolles"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/776098), though I suppose it can be read on its own. (Similarly, disregard this one if you prefer your Valjean family fics canon-compliant.) My thanks to 10littlebullets for geography help and to everyone who left nice feedback on the other stories -- hopefully this isn't _too_ out there as to be believable.

On a bright August morning in the year 1832, an old woman walked along a narrow street in Quartier Sainte-Avoye. She seemed to be on her way home from the market, for she was carrying a basket filled with bread and vegetables, pausing every now and then to change her grip. Her dress and manner was that of a simple working woman, her hair grey and her face lined. 

Jeanne Valjean, for such was her name, walked slowly and with bowed shoulders, her air feeble though her body had once been strong. Indeed, only a few months earlier her step had been less faltering, quite quick and powerful for a woman in her seventies. But the mother who had lost three children, a husband, and a brother -- and who had borne the loss by turning her grief into steel -- had softened over the years, sternness giving way to indulgence as her children grew up and lived and had children of their own. And so it had happened that when little Pierrot, not yet twenty and secretly his grandmother's favourite, had died on a barricade two months before, Jeanne Valjean had aged a decade in a day; she would never walk briskly again. 

Hauling her burden along, she attracted the notice of a man walking in the opposite direction. He was perhaps a decade younger than her, his eyes melancholy and his hair white, and his clothes, while of better quality than hers, were still unassuming. Now he approached Jeanne Valjean and said, gently, "That is a heavy basket you are carrying."

She paused and turned towards him. "I've carried heavier, Monsieur," she said. It was the truth.

The stranger gave a bashful smile. "Even so, let me carry it for you."

The offer was somewhat unexpected; still, Jeanne Valjean had accepted kindness from strangers before in her life, and he did not look as if he would make away with the basket. She handed it over, and he took it as if it weighed nothing. 

"Where are you going?" 

"Rue Aubry-le-Boucher."

They walked in silence for a while. She glanced at him sideways; there was a frown on his features not unlike her own. Though she was not usually given to conversation with strangers, something moved her to say, "You don't sound as if you were born in Paris, Monsieur."

He glanced at her quickly, his frown deepening for a moment before disappearing into blankness. When he spoke again, his accent was clearly Parisian. "Is that so?"

"Oh," she said, looking away. "Begging your pardon, Monsieur, I just thought there might be a hint of Picardy in your voice." Feeling that she had offended him, she went on, "I just felt homesick, perhaps. I'm from there, from Faverolles."

To her surprise, the stranger blanched at her words. Then his eyes narrowed, searching her face with an intensity that perplexed her. And then, so quickly she did not realise at first what was happening, he took her arm and pulled her into the opening of an alley nearby, almost causing her to stumble. She opened her mouth to cry out, more from surprised indignation than any real fear, but the stranger's next words silenced her. "Jeanne?" he said, scrutinising her face with a gaze even more ardent than before. "Is that you?"

Astonished, she stared at him. His eyes, it seemed to her, were familiar. So was his face -- beyond the decades, there was something, something she could not quite grasp, like a dream slipping away upon waking.

Then, quite suddenly, the mist lifted from her mind, and she gasped, stumbling backwards.

" _You --!_ "

"Yes," he said, his voice raw, and then he shocked her again: putting the basket down, he gently fell to his knees before her, heedless of the mucky ground, and bowed his head. She kept staring at him, her heart beating hard and fast, her mind a whirl. "No," she whispered, her mouth dry. "No, it can't be."

He looked up at her then, and she saw that it was. 

"Forgive me," he said, slipping into the dialect of their youth, sounding as if he were on the verge of tears. "I would not -- I'm so sorry." 

The pain of his voice went straight to her heart, clenching at it even as she could not bring herself to move: somewhere behind the mist of years, memories were stirring. "I can hardly believe it," she muttered in Picard. "I thought you were dead -- one of the neighbours can read, he saw it in the newspaper, years ago -- _Jean!_ ""

"Forgive me," he said again, voice choked. "I never wanted to -- for the children, and for you... Can you forgive me?"

Finding she could move again, she put out a trembling hand; then, grasping his shoulder for support, she knelt as well, ignoring the way her body ached. He stared at her with a horrible plea in his eyes -- the look of a youth caught redhanded in some petty crime -- and she drew a deep breath as she was flooded by memories of scolding her starving young children and her starving young brother before that, of being constantly trapped by desperation and the horrors of winter. 

"Jean," she said gravely, putting her hands around his face, as she had done when he was still a boy. "I wish you'd -- I wish I'd..." She swallowed. "If there was anything to forgive, I've forgiven you long ago. But I never knew if you..." Her old eyes were starting to sting; she closed them. "I never knew if you forgave _me_."

"Jeanne." He sounded hesitant now, almost puzzled. She kept her eyes closed, shaking her head. "Pierre died," she said. "He might have, even if you'd somehow found work... I don't know. But the others lived. They live." She opened her eyes again, and found that tears were still welling. She let them come. "I live with Jeanne and her husband. They have children, lovely children. One of them is..." 

But here her voice broke; she shook her head, taking one of her hands away to wipe at her face. "No. I should ask you to forgive me, not the other way 'round. What did they do to you?" she whispered, suddenly trembling. "I knew they took you away, but -- what happened? Why did you stay there? What did they do to you, Jean?"

He was staring at her with a look of disbelief and wonder in his eyes which made her feel ashamed. "They live?" he said, his voice hesitant, as if saying the words would somehow turn them into a lie.

"They live." She wiped at her face again, still trembling. "We live."

"You live." Tears were filling his eyes as well, and his voice was strangled as he caught her hands in his own and held them. "God is merciful."

"Tell me," she said, clutching at his hands. "Tell me everything."

He looked at her for a long moment, as if weighing something over in his mind. At last he nodded, pressing her hands once more. "Everything," he said.


End file.
